Reed Burnam is a multi-instrumentalist songwriter and solo artist originally from Houston, TX. Moving to Austin in early 2001, he spent nearly 25 years there, playing and recording with numerous bands across a range of genres (Lightning Over Water, Khali Haat, The Ron Titter Band, Ouiness, Many Birthdays, Bamako Airlines), and sitting in with local stalwarts such as Daniel Johnston and Ralph White. He recently relocated to Tulsa, OK.
Reed has home recorded and hand released close to two dozen albums and EPs dating back to 2000, mostly under his own Redirection Records imprint. In the early 2010's, he began collaborating with Portland, OR-based Ten Dollar Recording Company, resulting in the studio albums Another Switchback in 2017 and Universal Axis in 2020. The same period also saw the Redirection Records releases Songs for the Mbira to Play in 2018 and 2020’s Deconstructing Expectations in an Era of Boredom, written and recorded in a single day. After a short hiatus from recording, 2026 will mark the release of Funeral Selfie, his newest full length for TDRCo and his 19th full length solo album since the year 2000.
Throughout his varied solo work, Reed has always opted for spontaneity and variety over polish and technique, avoiding traditional singer songwriter trappings in favor of an irreverent (and slightly ADHD) approach to album craft. His compositions weave together random strands of whatever happens to sound interesting at the moment, and resist being hemmed in by genre, talent level, or expectation. To a fault, the result is deliberately nonchalant, moderately listenable, and perennially do-it-yourself.
A collection of short songs about lost cats, bad coffee, acute depression, summer heatwaves, deceased songwriters, and the author’s complete disdain for conspicuous consumption.
2020’s Universal Axis is Reed’s second full-length for TDRCo. The album is a covid era compendium of nonchalant musical happenstance, largely speed written and (poorly) recorded in a South Austin back alley where Reed was riding out the lockdowns living on crates of Lone Star, backyard veggies, and micro doses of psilocybin.
All instruments and voice by Reed
All songs by Reed
Production by Reed
Mastering by Tom Nunes at Atomic Disc in Salem, OR
Recorded at Redirection Studios, Austin, TX
Summer 2018 - Spring 2020
VIDEO: "Universal Axis"
REED BURNAM: Another Switchback
Released January 3, 2017
Another Switchback was originally written in its entirety over a sweltering weekend in Austin in the Summer of 2005, using improvised lyrics and an acoustic guitar recorded directly into a shitty little tape recorder. After collecting dust for many years, the album was eventually resuscitated and properly recorded in 2014 - 2016 at the Continental Control Unit in Portland, OR with the help of TDRCo label heads Mo Douglas and Mariya May.
Initially conceived as a larger than life, messy, 90’s style lo-fi rock record, Another Switchback mellowed over its shelf years into the more meditative and melodic outing it became.